The Pearl | Page 2

sermon into the lips of his "little queen." To modern ears such
exposition is at harsh discord with the simple human grief and longing
of the poet, but to the mediaevalist symbolic theology was a passion.
Precisely in the moment when she begins a discourse concerning the
doctrine of redemption, Beatrice turns upon Dante "eyes that might
make a man happy in the fire," and at its close he looks upon her and
beholds her "grow more beautiful."[3] If even Beatrice has been
considered mere personification, it is natural that the Pearl should be so
regarded, but the plain reader finds in the symbolic maiden of the
English poem, as in the transfigured lady of the Italian, some record of
a human being whose loss was anguish, and whose presence rapture, to
a poet long ago.
The lover of things mediæval will find in this little book not only the
familiar garden of Guillaume de Lorris, of Boccaccio and of Chaucer,
but an unexpected and enchanting vision of great forest and rushing
water, of hillside and plain, of crystal cliffs and flame-winged birds; of
the Pearl among her white peers; of the Apocalyptic Jerusalem,
discovered to the poet, it may be, as a goodly Gothic city, though its
walls are built of precious stone, and its towers rise from neither church
nor minster.
If even a few readers turn from the modern to the original version, the
translation will have had fair fortune, for the author of "The Pearl" is,
though unknown and unnamed, a poet second only to Chaucer in
Chaucer's generation.
It is a pleasure to record my many debts of gratitude: to Professor
Frank H. Chase of Beloit, Professor John L. Lowes of Swarthmore, and
Dr. Charles G. Osgood of Princeton, for their careful reading of the
translation in manuscript, with invaluable assistance and suggestion; to
Professor Martha Hale Shackford, and Miss Laura A. Hibbard, for
constant aid while the work was in making, and, above all, to Professor
Katharine Lee Bates for a critical, line by line, comparison of this
version with the original.
[Footnote 1: Par. III.]

[Footnote 2: Pearl, stanza 71.]
[Footnote 3: Par. VII, II. 17-18; Par. VIII, I. 15.]
S.J.
WELLESLEY COLLEGE,
June, 1908.
EDITIONS: R. Morris, Early English text Sc. 1864; I. Gollancz,
London, 1891; C.G. Osgood, Boston, 1906 (with admirable
introduction, etc.). TRANSLATIONS: Gollancz (above); S. Weir
Mitchell, New York, 1906 (poetic, but incomplete); G.G. Coulton,
London, 1906 (metre of the original); C.G. Osgood, Princeton, 1907
(prose).
THE PEARL
I
Pearl that the Prince full well might prize,
So surely set in shining
gold!
No pearl of Orient with her vies;
To prove her peerless I make
bold:
So round, so radiant to mine eyes,
smooth she seemed, so
small to hold,
Among all jewels judges wise
Would count her best
an hundred fold.
Alas! I lost my pearl of old!
I pine with heart-pain
unforgot;
Down through my arbour grass it rolled,
My own pearl,
precious, without spot.
Since in that spot it slipped from me
I wait, and wish, and oft
complain;
Once it would bid my sorrow flee,
And my fair fortune
turn again;
It wounds my heart now ceaselessly,
And burns my
breast with bitter pain.
Yet never so sweet a song may be
As, this
still hour, steals through my brain,
While verity I muse in vain
How
clay should her bright beauty clot;
O Earth! a brave gem thou dost
stain,
My own pearl, precious, without spot!
Needs must that spot with spices spread,
Where such wealth falleth to
decay;
Fair flowers, golden and blue and red,
Shine in the sunlight
day by day;
Nor flower nor fruit have witherèd
On turf wherein

such treasure lay;
The blade grows where the grain lies dead,
Else
were no ripe wheat stored away;
Of good come good things, so we
say,
Then surely such seed faileth not,
But spices spring in sweet
array
From my pearl, precious, without spot.
Once, to that spot of which I rhyme,
I entered, in the arbour green,

In August, the high summer-time
When corn is cut with sickles keen;

Upon the mound where my pearl fell,
Tall, shadowing herbs grew
bright and sheen,
Gilliflower, ginger and gromwell,
With peonies
powdered all between.
As it was lovely to be seen,
So sweet the
fragrance there, I wot,
Worthy her dwelling who hath been
My own
pearl, precious, without spot.
Upon that spot my hands I crossed
In prayer, for cold at my heart
caught,
And sudden sorrow surged and tossed,
Though reason
reconcilement sought.
I mourned my pearl, dear beyond cost,
And
strange fears with my fancy fought;
My will in wretchedness was lost,

And yet Christ comforted my thought.
Such odours to my sense
were brought,
I fell upon that flowery plot,
Sleeping,--a sleep with
dreams inwrought
Of my pearl, precious, without spot.
II
From the spot my spirit springs into space,
The while my body
sleeping lies;
My ghost is gone in God's good grace,
Adventuring
mid mysteries;
I know not what might be the place,
But I looked
where tall cliffs cleave the skies,
Toward a forest I turned my face,

Where ranks of